Trivia: Texas native David W. Harper became well known to audiences when he took on the role of Jim Bob on TV's The Waltons in 1972. He stayed with the series until it ended its run in 1981, and though he would reprise the role for subsequent Waltons TV movies, like 1982's A Wedding on Walton's Mountain. Harper largely retired from acting to become an art dealer.

Trivia: Many remember Kami Cotler as little Elizabeth from TV's The Waltons, which Cotler appeared on from 1972 to 1981. The actress also appeared in the short-lived Me and the Chimp in the 1970s, but otherwise retired from acting following the Waltons conclusion, returning only to reprise the role of Elizabeth for subsequent TV movies, like 1982's A Wedding on Walton's Mountain.

Trivia: Upon earning his BA at Bucknell University, Ralph Waite embarked upon no fewer than three careers before deciding upon acting. First, Waite was a social case worker in New York's Westchester County, a job he quit after running into the stone walls of indifference and bureaucracies. Then, after spending three years at the Yale School of Divinity, he was a practicing Presbyterian minister; this, too fell by the wayside due to Waite's unwillingness to conform to church protocol and his disenchantment over the perceived hypocrisy of his fellow clerics. Finally, he worked as a religious editor for the publishing firm of Harper & Row. This job might have panned out, but Waite, separated from his wife and suffering an identity crisis, felt the need to "prove himself" by entering a tougher, more competitive field. Thus, at the age of 30, Waite began taking acting lessons. His professional debut in the off-Broadway production The Balcony proved so disastrous that it is little wonder he chooses to regard his 1965 Broadway bow in Hogan's Goat as the true beginning of his career. After an excellent showing as Jack Nicholson's impotent brother in Five Easy Pieces (1971) the offers began pouring in. In 1972, Waite was cast as John Walton in the immensely popular TV series The Waltons. During the nine-season run of that ratings bonanza, Waite helped form the Los Angeles Actors' Theatre. He also was prominently featured in the blockbuster miniseries Roots (1977), and wrote and directed (but did not star in) the 1980 film On the Money. His post-Walton credits included the TV series Mississippi, the film Cliffhanger (1993) and TV movies Crash and Burn and Sin and Redemption. Towards the end of his career, he had a recurring role on Day of Our Lives as Father Matt, and played the father of two leading men on two long-running series - Gibbs on NCIS and Booth on Bones. Waite died in 2014 at age 85.

Trivia: Lead actress, onscreen from the '80s.

Trivia: Many remember Joe Conley for his role as Ike Godsey on TV's The Waltons, but the actor was actually a veteran at his craft long before he joined the series in 1972. Building a strong career out of small roles on early TV shows like Lassie and Dragnet, Conley specialized in single-episode appearances (aside from a six-episode recurring role on the sitcom Mister Ed) for 20 years, up until he was cast in The Waltons. He stayed with the series until 1981, and reprised the role for subsequent TV movies like A Wedding on Walton's Mountain. Conley subsequently went into semi-retirement, sporadically appearing in projects like 2000's Cast Away.

Trivia: By the time she first appeared as Grandma Walton in 1971, American actress Ellen Corby had been playing elderly characters for nearly thirty years--and she herself was still only in her fifties. The daughter of Danish immigrants, Ellen Hansen was born in Wisconsin and raised in Philadelphia; she moved to Hollywood in 1933 after winning several amateur talent shows. Her starring career consisted of tiny parts in low-budget Poverty Row quickies; to make a living, Ellen became a script girl (the production person responsible for maintaining a film's continuity for the benefit of the film editor), working first at RKO and then at Hal Roach studios, where she met and married cameraman Francis Corby. The marriage didn't last, though Ellen retained the last name of Corby professionally. While still a script girl, Ellen began studying at the Actors Lab, then in 1944 decided to return to acting full time. She played several movie bit roles, mostly as servants, neurotics, and busybodies, before earning an Oscar nomination for the role of Trina the maid in I Remember Mama (1948). Her career fluctuated between bits and supporting parts until 1971, when she was cast as Grandma Walton in the CBS movie special The Homecoming. This one-shot evolved into the dramatic series The Waltons in 1972, with Ms. Corby continuing as Grandma. The role earned Ellen a "Best Supporting Actress" Emmy award in 1973, and she remained with the series until suffering a debilitating stroke in 1976. After a year's recuperation, Ellen returned to The Waltons, valiantly carrying on until the series' 1980 cancellation, despite the severe speech and movement restrictions imposed by her illness. Happily, Ellen Corby endured, and was back as Grandma in the Waltons reunion special of the early '90s.

Trivia: Remembered for his role as Jason on the beloved 1970s TV series The Waltons, Jon Walmsley was a seasoned performer when he joined the show's cast in 1971. The British born actor had been making the rounds in Hollywood for over five years, appearing in episodes of shows like Combat! and My Three Sons, but The Waltons would prove to be his big break. He stayed with the series until it ended its run in 1981, though Walmsley would reprise the role for subsequent Waltons TV movies, like 1982's A Wedding on Walton's Mountain. He later explored a career in music, playing guitar on the Richard Marx album Repeat Offender.

Trivia: Los Angeles native Eric Scott didn't have to go far to try his hand at professional acting, making a few minor appearances on TV shows like Bewitched when he was barely a teenager. By 1972, the then 14 year old had caught his big break: a starring role on the series The Waltons. He stayed with the series until it ended its run in 1981, and though Scott would reprise the role for subsequent Waltons TV movies, like 1982's A Wedding on Walton's Mountain, he largely retired from acting to run his own company.

Trivia: Character actor John Crawford has appeared on screen in many films since 1945.

Trivia: Though perhaps best remembered for portraying the wise and crusty Grandpa Zeb Walton on the long-running The Waltons (1972-1978), character actor Will Geer had been a staple in films and television for many years before that. He had also been a Broadway regular since his theatrical debut in The Merry Wives of Windsor (1928). Born William Auge Ghere in Frankfort, IN, his interest in acting began in high school. Geer studied botany at the University of Chicago and earned a master's in botany at Columbia. During his college days, Geer also appeared in student theater. Always a bit of a rebel with a genuine love of people and the land, Geer hooked up with folksingers Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives during the Depression to travel about and perform, mostly at government work camps. Even late in life, Geer described himself as a folklorist. Actress Helen Hayes wryly described him once as "the world's oldest hippie." He got his professional start with Eva Le Gallienne's National Repertory Company. During the '30s and '40s, Geer appeared often on Broadway. Beginning with The Misleading Lady in 1932, he began playing small occasional roles in films. By the late '40s, he had become a character actor in such films as Intruder in the Dust (1949). He often appeared in Westerns like Comanche Territory and Broken Arrow (1950). In 1951, after appearing in four films that year, Geer was blacklisted by the House Un-American Activities Committee for refusing to answer their questions. Still, Geer managed to appear in at least one film, Salt of the Earth, a defiant, incendiary documentary look at a worker's strike led by the wives of abused salt miners in New Mexico that featured a production staff largely comprised of blackballed Hollywood artists. Other than that, Geer returned to Broadway until 1962 when Otto Preminger cast him as a Senate minority leader in Advise and Consent. During the '60s, the 6'2", 230-pound Geer was frequently cast in villainous roles. He often appeared on television throughout the decade in shows ranging from Gunsmoke to Hawaii 5-0 as well as playing a regular role on the short-lived series The Young Rebels (1970-1971). He was a key member of The Waltons from the pilot special through his death when the series was on summer hiatus in 1978. His was among the show's most popular characters and he is said to have patterned Zebulon Walton after producer/creator Earl Hamner's book character, himself, and his own grandfather, a successful sourdough during the California goldrush who sported a mustache and white hair similar to Geer's own. It was his grandfather who taught the actor to love nature and to study botany. In addition to his work on the popular family series, Geer also continued a busy feature-film and television-movie career. His last film appearance was in the highly regarded made-for-TV biography of Harriet Tubman, A Woman Called Moses (1978). His daughter, Ellen Geer, is also an actor.

Trivia: The eldest of six sisters, Michael Learned spent her first decade on her family's farm in Connecticut. When she was 11, Learned moved to Austria, where her father worked for the U.S. State Department. While attending boarding school in England, she discovered the theater, and decided to make it her life's work. At 16, she married actor Peter Donat, a union that lasted until 1972. Dividing her time between stage acting and raising her sons, she appeared in Canadian and American Shakespeare Festival, and for several years was associated with San Francisco's American Conservatory Theatre. While appearing in a production of Noel Coward's Private Lives, Learned was selected by John Rich to play Olivia Walton on his upcoming TV series The Waltons (she replaced Patricia Neal, who starred as Olivia in the 1971 pilot film The Homecoming). She remained with The Waltons until 1980, winning three Emmies in the process. In 1981, she was starred as Mary Benjamin in her own series, Nurse (1981-82), which earned her a fourth Emmy. Hoping to distance herself from the Olivia Walton image, she went to play Dr. Marie Teller in the 1988 weekly Hothouse and model agency head Trish Carlin in Living Dolls (1989). She also appeared in such theatrical features as Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993) and such made-for-TV specials as All My Sons (1986). Eventually, however, Michael Learned returned to the Waltons fold in a 1995 TV-movie reunion.

Trivia: Ronnie Claire Edwards made her acting debut with a role that most actors only dream of, taking on the role of Corabeth on TV's The Waltons in 1974. The show was intensely popular, and Edwards remained with the cast until the show ended its run in 1981. She also acted in a variety of other projects, like the '70s TV movies Future Cop and When Every Day Was the Fourth of July. After The Waltons, Edwards enjoyed an extensive career in repository theater, and continued to act on camera, mostly in the form of TV guest appearances on shows like Designing Women and Murder, She Wrote. She made several returns to the Waltons in the '90s for TV movies like A Walton Thanksgiving Reunion (1993) and A Walton Wedding (1995). Edwards died in 2016 at age 83.

Trivia: Character actress, onscreen (after much stage experience) from 1968; usually in matronly roles.

Trivia: A paragon among character actors, the late American thesp Lewis Arquette faded smoothly and imperceptibly into his individual roles with such efficiency and success that many television devotees and filmgoers will sooner recognize the names of Arquette's craggily-voiced, cantankerous personages than his own name -- from Seinfeld's Leapin' Larry, the crippled furniture magnate whose establishment burns to the ground as the result of a freak accident, to retired taxidermist Clifford Wooley in Christopher Guest's uproarious mockumentary Waiting for Guffman (1996) to the pot-bellied law enforcement officer, Chief Louis Hartley, in Scream 2 (1997). The son of television personality Cliff Arquette (a Tonight Show mainstay), Lewis Arquette was born December 14, 1935. He launched his career as a Broadway stage actor, then returned home to the Windy City and enlisted with the infamous Second City troupe. As a member of that ensemble, Arquette fine-tuned his own aptitude for spur-of-the-moment improvisation -- a gift that, combined with Arquette's distinctive look, prompted Hollywood to summon him for numerous character roles. Arquette began on the small screen (on an uncharacteristically somber note) as J.D. Pickett in the melancholic, tragedy-laden seventh season of the hit CBS series The Waltons -- a role that lasted for several years, until the program wrapped in August 1981. Arquette spent the late '70s, '80s, and '90s filling his resumé with bit parts in alternately forgettable and memorable pictures. Roles (in addition to the aforementioned turns) included Hatcher in The China Syndrome (1979), the warden in the "coming attractions" parody Loose Shoes (1980), a foreman in Badge of the Assassin (1985), Mr. Stokes in the Lily Tomlin-Bette Midler comedy Big Business (1988), Herm in The Great Outdoors (1988), Wyler in Tango & Cash (1989), Sheriff Bugiere in Chopper Chicks in Zombietown (1991), Texas Joe in The Linguini Incident (1992), Mr. Ingersol in Attack of the 50 Ft. Woman (1993), and a cardinal in the Adam Sandler comedy-fantasy Little Nicky (2000). Arquette was still active onscreen when he died of congestive heart failure on February 10, 2001 -- just two months after his 65th birthday. Arquette was the father of actresses Rosanna and Patricia Arquette, as well as actors David Arquette, Alexis Arquette, and Richmond Arquette. He co-starred with his sons and daughters in many of his pictures.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the '70s.

Trivia: Character actor Ted Gehring first appeared onscreen in the late '60s.

Trivia: Character and voice actor Bob Hastings is best known for his television work on series such as McHale's Navy and All in the Family, but he also appeared in some feature films. Born in New York in 1921, he was busy on the radio in his twenties, specializing in male ingenue and comedy roles, including portraying Archie Andrews in an NBC radio adaptations of Archie Comics in 1944. His first credited television appearance was in 1955, in the U.S. Steel Hour production of No Time for Sergeants. Hastings made his feature film debut in 1962 in the Disney production Moon Pilot, starring Tom Tryon, and that same year got his first regular series role as Lt. Elroy Carpenter, the obsequious aide to Joe Flynn's Captain Binghamton on McHale's Navy. He was with the series for four seasons, and it led to his subsequent big-screen work in the features McHale's Navy (1964) and McHale's Navy Joins the Air Force (1965). He also played Bert Ramsey on the daytime drama General Hospital and managed to work in occasional big-screen work, in pictures such as The Flim-Flam Man. In the 1970s, Hastings played the recurring character of Kelsey the tavern-keeper on All in the Family. Hastings' on-screen acting generally saw him cast as nervous, sycophantic mid-level bureaucrats, or, occasionally, as rough-hewn working-class types. But as a voice artist he has had a much wider range of portrayals, including heroes and authority figures, including the voice of Clark Kent in the 1960s Batman/Superman Hour and, in more recent decades, the voice of Commissioner Gordon on the animated Batman from Fox network. Bob Hastings is the older brother of actor Don Hastings, who is perhaps best remembered by viewers of one generation for his portrayal of the Video Ranger in Captain Video; Bob also appeared in the series, in a much less prominent role. He died in 2014, at age 89.